Withdrawal by 2011 is inevitable, aff is the only chance to withdraw on the terms on CIL AFP 6/2 ’10, “Odierno gives Obama ‘positive’ report on Iraq security” http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5giXOrrHvhjt0TgUugMKcJGrMOPoQ
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — US commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno Wednesday gave President Barack Obama a "positive" report on security as American combat troops prepare to exit within three months. "General Odierno provided a positive assessment of the current security conditions and the ongoing transition of responsibilities to Iraqi security forces," White House deputy spokesman Bill Burton told reporters. "The President and General Odierno also discussed the encouraging step taken by Iraq's federal Supreme Court to certify election results, as well as US support for an inclusive government formation process." Burton was speaking as Obama headed to Pittsburgh on Air Force One, after meeting Odierno in the Oval Office. The meeting came a day after US military support for Iraqi efforts to secure Baghdad's Green Zone ended, in the latest step in the American withdrawal from Iraq more than seven years after its invasion of Iraq. American combat troops are due to pull out of Iraq by the end of August, leaving behind around 50,000 soldiers who will focus on advising and training their Iraqi counterparts. Under the terms of a US-Iraq bilateral security agreement signed in November 2008, all American soldiers are to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Plan
Plan: The Supreme Court of The United States should rule the invasion of Iraq a violation of customary international law and therefore illegal and advise a withdraw with all deliberate speed.
Contention 1: International Law
The invasion of Iraq was blatantly in violation of international law, states need to restrict the violation
Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, William B. Saxbe Designated Professor of Law, Mortiz College of Law & Mershon Center, at the Ohio State University, 4/17/ 2003, JURIST Guest Columnist, “THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ: WHAT INTERNATIONAL LAW REQUIRES NOW”, Jurist Legal Intelligence
International lawyers around the world advised their governments on March 19 that the US-led invasion of Iraq was in violation of fundamental international law.[1] Following similar law violations by the US in the past, governments typically registered their condemnation by votes in the UN General Assembly. But Iraq is different and governments will face more, and more complicated, decisions in its aftermath. Two features distinguish this invasion:Iraq has considerably more assets outside US control than has been the case in the past, and the US policy behind the invasion, the doctrine of preemptive force, challenges the international legal system in a way the US has never before attempted. These features will create greater demands on states and organizations to consider their legal obligations in reacting to the invasion. Current obligations include the following: First, if states wish to preserve the current restrictions on the use of force, they will not condone the invasion, even while they condemn Saddam Hussein’s criminal acts and failure to comply with UN Security Council mandates. Second, the United Nations can legitimately administer Iraq, not the representatives of an unlawful occupying power. For the UN to administer, the Security Council must authorize it to do so in a new resolution. Ideally, the Council would also authorize a major peacekeeping and police force from states that did not take part in the war. The precedents for these steps are found in the examples of Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
Violation of international law with the preventive attack on Iraq threatens all CIL
Duncan E. J. Currie LL.B. (Hons.) 5/22/2003 “’Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq” LL.M. A number of international lawyers have written opinions stating that it would be a violation of international law if the United States, United Kingdom and other States were to use military force against Iraq without specific, new Security Council authorization. These arguments will not be repeated here and reference should be made to those opinions. Notable are the opinions by Rabinder Singh and Charlotte Kilroy of Matrix Chambers. 25 The International Commission of Jurists denounced the attack as an illegal invasion of Iraq which amounts to a war of aggression. 26 Sixteen senior teachers of international law from the United Kingdom and France 27 wrote a statement stating that “[o]n the basis of the information publicly available, there is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq…. Before military action can lawfully be undertaken against Iraq, the security council must have indicated its clearly expressed assent. It has not yet done so. A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law.” 31 Canadian law professors said that US attack “would be a fundamental breach of international law and would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War,” 28 and 43 Australian legal experts said that the initiation of a war against Iraq by the self-styled ‘coalition of the willing’ would be a fundamental violation of international law and said that the United States doctrine or preemptive self defence contradicts the cardinal principle of the modern international legal order and the primary rationale for the founding of the UN after World War II - the prohibition of the unilateral use of force to settle disputes. 29 On March 11, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that "[i]f the U.S. and others were to go outside the Council and take military action it would not be in conformity with the Charter." 30 Briefly stated, it is clear from Article 2(4), Article 42 and Article 51 of the UN Charter that Member States are to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. Force may only be used if specifically approved by the Security Council or proportionate force may be used in self defence when a threat is imminent. In the latter case, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, “preventive action in foreign territory is justified only in case of ‘an instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’.” 31
The invasion of Iraq was an opportunity to rethink international law and the doctrine of preemption David M. Ackerman (Legislative Attorney American Law Division) 3/17/2003 , CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Order Code RS21314, “International Law and the Preemptive Use of Force Against Iraq” If customary international law governing the preemptive use of force does remain valid, a primary difficulty still remains of determining what situations meet the test of necessity. As illustrated in the examples listed above, that requirement is most easily met when an armed attack is clearly imminent, as in the case of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. But beyond such obvious situations, as Abram Chayes argued, the judgment of necessity becomes increasingly subjective; and there is at present no consensus either in theory or practice about whether the possession or development of weapons of mass destruction by a rogue state justifies the preemptive use of force. Most analysts recognize that if overwhelmingly lethal weaponry is possessed by a nation willing to use that weaponry directly or through surrogates, some kind of anticipatory self-defense may be a matter of national survival; and many contend that international law ought, if it does not already do so, to allow for the preemptive use of force in that situation. 18 But many states and analysts are decidedly reluctant to legitimate the preemptive use of force even in that situation on the grounds the justification can easily be abused. Moreover, it remains a fact that the international community judged Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor site in 1981 to be an aggressive act rather than an act of self-defense. An attack on Iraq, if done apart from authorization by the Security Council, likely will give the international community a renewed opportunity to determine whether traditional international law regarding preemption still applies or whether it ought to be reformulated.bn
Judicial incorporation of CIL strengthens international law globally
Douglas Sylvester 1994 , J.D., University at Buffalo School of Law, 1994; B.A., University of Toronto (St. Michael's College), 1991. Spring, 42 Buffalo Law Review 555, pg. lexis
The preceding sections have shown that historical and theoretical objections to a modern application of customary international law are not dispositive.Since the judiciary is not precluded from applying customary international law by the Constitution, history, or political theory, the only remaining question to be answered is whether the judiciary should begin applying it. The answer is clearly yes, for a number of reasons. First, there is the fact that much of international law since the Second World War has been created and fostered under the auspices, and to the benefit, of the United States. Judicial applications of international law have the possibility of continuing to solidify and evolve that process. Second, the decisions of domestic tribunals, as evidence of state practice, can have a significant impact on the further development of international law. n301 Increased participation of the domestic judiciary in international law cases will aid in the development of international law in accordance with the interests of the United States. [*620] Third, United States attempts to foster the rule of law in other nations have been seriously hampered by this country's refusal to be bound by the very proscriptions it espouses. This country's return to international legitimacy, even if through judicial imposition, would go far to strengthening the rule of law in international relations -- a development that can only support American interests. Finally, the disproportionate effect that this country's actions have upon the development of international law is another factor compelling the judiciary to enforce legitimacy. The incorporation of this law into United States constitutional discourse could have important ramifications. Such an incorporation could simultaneously strengthen the body of customary international law and make it easier for other nations to identify and enforce this law. Once these laws are made explicit it will become more difficult for violations to occur.
The plan’s precedent is modeled globally.
Angela G. Narasimhan, Ph D Candidate in Poli Sci @ Syracuse, 2010 (“A more global court? A call for a new perspective on judicial globalization and its effect on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Special Issue Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation. Pg. 123-151. Emerald Group Publishing)
Indeed, the greater political environment in which the Court operates has changed in recent decades. Since the end of the Cold War, the American legal system has gained visibility abroad through the U.S. involvement in constitution drafting and judicial reform. Although this involvement was originally a minor part of American foreign aid and concentrated primarily on the new democracies of Europe and the former Soviet Union, it became a primary focus of U.S. democracy assistance across the globe by the late 1990s as attention turned to the importance of securing the rule of law in transitional countries (Carothers, 2005). As a result, the prominence of our national judicial system quickly grew and members of foreign and international courts became more familiar with and likely to consider its decisions (Slaughter, 1998). Through these efforts, the U.S. system had a profound impact on the constitutional structure of emerging democracies and new legal networks as the active exportation and influence of the Bill of Rights abroad helped universalize human rights norms and led to international convergence on the importance of their protection (Kelemen & Sibbitt, 2004). On a global scale, a rise in both formal and informal interaction between the national judiciaries of the world has also been noted as a result of the legal connections that were forged in the post–Cold War era (Ackerman, 1997). The development of an active international community of judges and legal professionals has been part of what some scholars call judicial globalization, a process in which national courts have become increasingly likely to communicate and consult each others’ decisions (Slaughter, 1997). Although the consideration of foreign legal decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court is a disputed practice, the travel schedules and international commitments of its members reveal that they do participate in this global judicial community. While the U.S. government's active role in post–Cold War judicial reform has resulted in greater visibility of the Supreme Court and its decisions abroad (Scheppele, 2003), however, the question of whether its foreign connections and new level of global prominence have had any feedback effect on the Court itself remains largely unanswered. Within an increasingly global network of legal norms and actors, the U.S. role is generally considered to be limited to that of an exporter, not an importer; when certain justices have appeared to import foreign law by citing it in Court opinions, they have been politically vilified and criticized by other justices and legal scholars. Existing literature on the Supreme Court largely mirrors this emphasis, restricting its analysis of external influences on the Court to foreign law and the decisions by certain justices to cite it. As a result, the possibility that changes brought about by judicial globalization may have influenced the Court in other ways has been overlooked. This chapter calls for a more dynamic perspective that measures these changes and investigates the full range of their potential effects on Court decisions, as well as on the way that the justices consider their role within increasingly globalized legal networks. First, it reviews the debate on foreign citations and proposes that we begin by considering alternative theories of judicial decision-making when discussing their place in American constitutional law. We need to look beyond justices’ ideology and conflicting views on constitutional interpretation to explain their willingness to cite foreign law or not to fully capture the new set of pressures and choices that judicial globalization may have created for Supreme Court justices. Second, this chapter identifies several models of Supreme Court behavior that do so, in that they consider the role of external sources of influence on its decisions, including domestic and international actors, norms, and institutions. These models can help us understand the ways in which judicial globalization has the potential to expose the Court to global trends, norms, or political priorities through interaction at both an individual level and an institutional level. Third, it argues that we would also benefit by searching for evidence of judicial globalization in places other than the justices’ opinions. The recent era of globalization, characterized by changes such as a rise in the citation of Supreme Court decisions by foreign courts and international interest in its cases, has transformed the broader social and political environment in which it operates and created new salient audiences that may change the way that the justices approach and define their job. Finally, this chapter concludes by noting that the domestic debate over foreign influences on the Supreme Court has attracted attention and concern throughout the world, highlighting the globalized nature of legal networks and the degree to which its members are invested in how much respect is given to the laws of international organizations and other nations in our constitutional system. The backlash against American judicial isolationism abroad has changed the stakes of any future efforts by the Court's members to define their relationship with foreign counterparts, as it becomes apparent that those efforts have the potential to affect its position within the global legal order and threaten its legitimacy abroad.
Only court action sets a precedent for future use of customary international law. Kundmueller, 02 (JD Candidate – Notre Dame, 28 J. Legis. 359)
This section of this Note, on the legal authority of customary international law vis-a-vis federal legislation, has not been included with the purpose of discovering which position is correct. Rather, the overview of this debate holds a central place in this Note because it demonstrates some of the issues at stake as U.S. courts begin to integrate customary international law into what were previously thought of as purely or primarily domestic issues. Admittedly, the number of cases using customary international law in this manner is still few and primarily based on some enabling federal statute. Nonetheless, these decisions take on a greater importance in light of the de- bate discussed above. Should theorists such as Paust and Lillich prevail, these early cases, taking the first modern steps in the process of identifying and applying customary international law would become crucial precedent in a law-making process that Congress would be powerless to overturn. On the other hand, the case law about to be analyzed will lie at the mercy of the will of the people and their Congress, should the theories of Kelley and Garland prove prophetic. It is still too early to know which faction will dominate, but this analysis of their theories does survey the potential spectrum of out- comes and the legal and political issues yet to be determined.
The convergent nature of domestic and international law makes the court essential Knowles, 9’ (Robert, Acting Assistant Professor, New York University School of Law, 41 Ariz. St. L.J. 87 American Hegemony and the Foreign Affairs Constitution)
International relations scholars are still struggling to define the current era. The U.S.-led international order is unipolar, hegemonic, and, in some ways, imperial. In any event, this order diverges from traditional realist assumptions in important respects. It is unipolar, but stable. It is more hierarchical. The U.S. is not the same as other states; it performs unique functions in the world and has a government open and accessible to foreigners. And the stability and legitimacy of the system depends more on successful functioning of the U.S. government as a whole than it does on balancing alliances crafted by elite statesmen practicing realpolitik. “[W]orld power politics are shaped primarily not by the structure created by interstate anarchy but by the foreign policy developed in Washington.”368 These differences require a new model for assessing the institutional competences of the executive and judicial branches in foreign affairs. One approach would be to adapt an institutional competence model using insights from a major alternative theory of international relations – liberalism. Liberal IR theory generally holds that internal characteristics of states – in particular, the form of government – dictate states behavior, and that democracies do not go to war against one another.369 Liberalists also regard economic interdependence and international institutions as important for maintaining peace and stability in the world.370 Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter has proposed a binary model that distinguishes between liberal, democratic states and non-democratic states.371 Because domestic and foreign issues are “more convergent” among liberal democracies, Slaughter reasons, the courts should decide issues concerning the scope of the political branches’ powers.372 With respect to non-liberal states, the position of the U.S. is more “realist,” and courts should deploy a high level of deference.373 A strength of Dean Slaughter’s binary approach is that it would tend to reduce the uncertainty in foreign affairs adjudication. Professor Nzelibe has criticized this approach because it would put courts in the difficult position of determining which countries are liberal democracies.374 But even if courts are capable of making these determinations, they would still face the same dilemmas adjudicating controversies regarding non-liberal states. Where is the appropriate boundary between foreign affairs and domestic matters? How much discretion should be afforded the executive when individual rights and accountability values are at stake? To resolve these dilemmas, an institutional competence model should be applicable to foreign affairs adjudication across the board. In constructing a new realist model, it is worth recalling that the functional justifications for special deference are aimed at addressing problems of a particular sort of role effectiveness—which allocation of power among the branches will best achieve general governmental effectiveness in foreign affairs. In the 21st Century, America’s global role has changed, and the best means of achieving effectiveness in foreign affairs have changed as well. The international realm remains highly political—if not as much as in the past— but it is American politics that matters most. If the U.S. is truly an empire— and in some respects it is—the problems of imperial management will be far different from the problems of managing relations with one other great power or many great powers. Similarly, the management of hegemony or unipolarity requires a different set of competences. Although American predominance is recognized as a salient fact, there is no consensus among realists about the precise nature of the current international order.375 The hegemonic model I offer here adopts common insights from the three IR frameworks—unipolar, hegemonic, and imperial—described above.
International Law is inevitable but US engagement is critical to its effectiveness Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, 2 (Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, May, http://www.ieer.org/reports/treaties/execsumm.pdf) The evolution of international law since World War II is largely a response to the demands of states and individuals living within a global society with a deeply integrated world economy. In this global society, the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors, and individuals are not confined within borders, whether we look to greenhouse gas accumulations, nuclear testing, the danger of accidental nuclear war, or the vast massacres of civilians that have taken place over the course of the last hundred years and still continue. Multilateral agreements increasingly have been a primary instrument employed by states to meet extremely serious challenges of this kind, for several reasons. They clearly and publicly embody a set of universally applicable expectations, including prohibited and required practices and policies. In other words, they articulate global norms, such as the protection of human rights and the prohibitions of genocide and use of weapons of mass destruction. They establish predictability and accountability in addressing a given issue. States are able to accumulate expertise and confidence by participating in the structured system offered by a treaty. However, influential U.S. policymakers are resistant to the idea of a treaty-based international legal system because they fear infringement on U.S. sovereignty and they claim to lack confidence in compliance and enforcement mechanisms. This approach has dangerous practical implications for international cooperation and compliance with norms. U.S. treaty partners do not enter into treaties expecting that they are only political commitments by the United States that can be overridden based on U.S. interests. When a powerful and influential state like the United States is seen to treat its legal obligations as a matter of convenience or of national interest alone, other states will see this as a justification to relax or withdraw from their own commitments. If the United States wants to require another state to live up to its treaty obligations, it may find that the state has followed the U.S. example and opted out of compliance.
An international legal system is inevitable – not incorporating international law only risks legal anarchy. Martinez, 03 (Assistant Professor, Stanford Law School, November, 56 Stan. L. Rev. 429)
The fact is that judicial bodies around the world are interacting with each other every day. These interactions take many forms - a Canadian court reviews a NAFTA arbitration panel award obtained by a U.S. investor against the government of Mexico;n60 a court in Florida hearing a civil suit against a former Latin American military officer now living in the United States must consider whether to follow decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on the scope of military commanders' liability for torture committed by their subordinates; n61 a court in Texas hearing a bankruptcy case must decide how to react to parallel suits pending in England and the Cayman Islands. n62 Courts cannot avoid these interactions. A court may decide to ignore the existence of a foreign or international court, but that in itself is a choice, and one which shapes the contours of the emerging international system. Over time, a habitual practice of parochially disregarding the existence of other courts will lead to chaos and dysfunction. It is not too far-fetched to say that property interests will be compromised and business relations impaired, human rights will be violated and legal obligations will be thrown into doubt. We will have an international judicial system, but it will be a severely dysfunctional one. Such an anarchic outcome seems undesirable, but how can it be avoided? Is this system doomed to settle into chaotic behavior, or can self-organization by courts make it work?
IF the US does not respect international law it will weaken our ability to protect our interest abroad
Antonia Chayes, BA, Radcliffe College, Visiting Professor of International Politics and Law in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University., Summer 2008, Volume 33, Number 1, E-ISSN: 1531-4804 Print ISSN: 0162-2889 “How American Treaty Behavior Threatens National Security”
Such conflicting positions, as one commentator has observed, signal to the international community that U.S. treaty obligations and policy can be unpredictable, unenforceable, and unreliable. The conflicting positions indicate that the United States "withdraw[s] from treaties it deems critical of United States positions and show[s] disdain for long-standing international obligations which the United States itself helped create."90 The result is that, if the Bush administration "does not protect the interests of foreign governments and their nationals, it may find its own ability to protect United States nationals abroad has been damaged."91 [End Page 68
International law is key to avert multiple scenarios for extinction Malaysian Medical Association 02 [“11TH SEPTEMBER - DAY OF REMEMBRANCE,” Sep 6, http://www.mma.org.my/current_topic/sept.htm] Our world is increasingly interdependent and the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors and individuals transcend national boundaries. Weapons of mass destruction, landmines, small arms and environmental damage have global consequences, whether they be deadly armed conflict, nuclear testing or climate change from global warming. The risk of nuclear war continues to threaten human survival. The casualties resulting from even a single explosion would overwhelm the medical facilities in any city in the world. The use of nuclear weapons is morally indefensible, and the International Court of Justice has declared their use and threatened use illegal. Yet, nuclear weapons remain part of the military strategy of many nations. Nuclear war must be prevented. Nuclear weapons must be eliminated. Ongoing violations of the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian and human rights law and increasing poverty and preventable disease continue to fuel violence. World military expenditure, estimated at US$839 billion in 2001, prevents governments from meeting the social needs of their citizens and the global proliferation of armaments has caused unspeakable carnage. We call on all governments to place their foreign and domestic policies and their behaviour under the scrutiny of international law and international institutions. Each government must take primary responsibility for ending its own contribution to the cycle of violence. As citizens, we are expected to abide by the law. We expect no less from governments. This is a necessary part of honouring the lives of so many men, women and children whose deaths are commemorate. At a time when global problems should be solved by cooperating and complying with multilateral legally-binding treaties, and by embracing the rule of law as valuable instruments for building common security and safe-guarding the long-term, collective interests of humanity, there are unmistable signs that powerful states are taking unilateral action, setting aside international treaties, and undermining international law. The principle of the rule of law implies that even the most powerful must comply with the law, even if it is difficult or costly or when superior economic, military and diplomatic power may seem to make compliance unnecessary. The destruction of the symbols of American economic power and military might on 11th September is a salutary reminder that military power, including the possession of nuclear weapons, does not deter terrorists or confer security or invulnerability. It has prompted the Bush administration to declare "war on terror" and convinced it that a military response is the best way to fight terrorism on a global scale, without considering alternative, more effective ways of combating terrorism, such as addressing the root causes of terrorism.The greatest betrayal of those who died on 11th September 2001 would be to not recognise that there are non-violent ways of resolving conflict. This is a difficult, uncertain path to take, whereas violence and war are easy, predictable options. The lesson of 11th September is that our collective survival depends upon forging cooperative, just and equitable relationships with each other; in rejecting violence and war; and in pursuing non-violent resolutions to conflict. The alternative is a world perpetually divided, continually at war, and possibly destroying itself through environmental degradation or the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The only alternative to international law is genocide and nuclear war. Shaw, 1’ (Sussex International Relations Professor , Review of International Studies, 27, pp. 646-7)
The new politics of international relations require us, therefore, to go beyond the anti-imperialism of the intellectual left as well as of the semi-anarchist traditions of the academic discipline. We need to recognize three fundamental truths. First, in the twenty-first century people struggling for democratic liberties across the non Western world are likely to make constant demands on our solidarity. Courageous academics, students and other intellectuals will be in the forefront of these movements. They deserve the unstinting support of intellectuals in the West. Second, the old international thinking in which democratic movements are seen as purely internal to states no longer carries conviction?despite the lingering nostalgia for it on both the American right and the anti-American left. The idea that global principles can and should be enforced worldwide is firmly established in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. This consciousness will become a powerful force in the coming decades. Third, global state-formation is a fact. International institutions are being extended, and (like it or not) they have a symbiotic relation with the major centre of state power, the increasingly internationalized Western conglomerate. The success of the global-democratic revolutionary wave depends first on how well it is consolidated in each national context?but second, on how thoroughly it is embedded in international networks of power, at the centre of which, inescapably, is the West. From these political fundamentals, strategic propositions can be derived. First, democratic movements cannot regard non-governmental organizations and civil society as ends in themselves. They must aim to civilize local states, rendering them open, accountable and pluralistic, and curtail the arbitrary and violent exercise of power. Second, democratizing local states is not a separate task from integrating them into global and often Western-centred networks. Reproducing isolated local centres of power carries with it classic dangers of states as centres of war.84 Embedding global norms and integrating new state centres with global institutional frameworks are essential to the control of violence. (To put this another way: the proliferation of purely national democracies is not a recipe for peace.) Third, while the global revolution cannot do without the West and the UN, neither can it rely on them unconditionally. We need these power networks, but we need to tame them too, to make their messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society worldwide. This will involve the kind of 'cosmopolitan democracy' argued for by David Held.85 It will also require us to advance a global sodaZ-democratic agenda, to address the literally catastrophic scale of world social inequalities. This is not a separate problem: social and economic reform is an essential ingredient of alternatives to warlike and genocidal power; these feed off and reinforce corrupt and criminal political economies. Fourth, if we need the global-Western state, if we want to democratize it and make its institutions friendlier to global peace and justice, we cannot be indifferent to its strategic debates. It matters to develop international political interventions, legal institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives to bombing our way through zones of crisis. It matters that international intervention supports pluralist structures, rather than ratifying Bosnia-style apartheid}6 As political intellectuals in the West, we need to have our eyes on the ball at our feet, but we also need to raise them to the horizon. We need to grasp the historic drama that is transforming worldwide relationships between people and state, as well as between state and state. We need to think about how the turbulence of the global revolution can be consolidated in democratic, pluralist, international networks of both social relations and state authority. We cannot be simply optimistic about this prospect. Sadly, it will require repeated violent political crises to push Western and other governments towards the required restructuring of world institutions.87 What I have outlined is a huge challenge; but the alternative is to see the global revolu tion splutter into partial defeat, or degenerate into new genocidal wars? perhaps even nuclear conflicts. The practical challenge for all concerned citizens, and the theoretical and analytical challenges for students of international relations and politics, are intertwined.
Contention 2: Preventive War
Preventive logic allows for military strikes and war- empirically proven
Jack S. Levy, Preventive War and Democratic Politics, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, 3/1/2007, Chicago, Rutgers University, International Studies Quarterly (2008) 52, 1–24 Preventive logic can lead to a limited military strike as well as to an all-out war. 23 Whether a limited strike remains limited or escalates to war depends not only on the actions of the preventer, but also on those of the target. Presumably the initiator anticipates the target’s likely response and incorporates it into its initial decision calculus. It might launch a limited military strike if it expects no military response and refrain from military action if it expects a major military response. Israel’s anticipation that Iraq would not respond to a limited Israeli strike contributed to its decision to launch a surgical strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 (Nakdimon 1987; Perlmutter et al. 2003). In contrast, the U.S. anticipation that North Korea would probably respond to a limited strike against its nuclear facilities in 1994 with an all-out attack on South Korea was a major factor in the U.S. decision against military action (Sigal 1997; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci 2004). Similarly, India was deterred from launching a surgical strike against Pakistan’s nuclear facilities by its belief that Pakistan would respond in kind and that the radioactive fallout from an attack on India’s nuclear reactors would be enormously costly (Ganguly and Hagerty 2005, 55–57; Perkovich 1999).
Preventive motive for war triggers power transition and military responses
Jack S. Levy, Preventive War and Democratic Politics, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, 3/1/2007, Chicago, Rutgers University, International Studies Quarterly (2008) 52, 1–24 The preventive motivation for war, usually associated with power transitions involving the overtaking of a declining leader by a rising challenger, can also arise in response to more limited power shifts. One example is a ‘‘rapid approach’’ that levels off short of a power transition (Wayman 1996). Another is the challenger’s crossing a particular threshold of military power, leading to a step-level power shift. While such limited power shifts are presumably less threatening than those leading to a reversal of power relations, they can still trigger military responses, even in a non-nuclear context. The Czech ⁄ Russian arms sale to Egypt was a major factor leading to Israel’s preventive motivation for war in the 1956 Sinai Campaign (Levy and Gochal 2001–2002). The anticipated completion of Russia’s trans-Siberian railroad and its expected enhancement of Russia’s power projection capabilities in East Asia contributed to Japan’s decision for war in 1904 (Patrikeeff and Shukman 2007).
The doctrine of double standards i.e. the preventive logic diminishes the US’s ability to promote values and interests
Harold Hongju Koh Stanford Law Review, Vol. 55, No. 5 (May, 2003), pp. 1479-1527, “On American Exceptionalism” If the emerging Bush Doctrine takes hold, the United States may well emerge from the post-9/11 era still powerful, but deeply committed to double standards as a means of preserving U.S. hegemony. Promoting standards that apply to others but not to us represents the very antithesis of America's claim, since the end of World War II, to apply universal legal and human rights standards. The real danger of the Bush Doctrine is thus that it will turn the United States, which since 1945 has been the major architect and buttress of the global system of international law and human rights, into its major outlier, weakening that system and reducing its capacity to promote universal values and protect American interests. More fundamentally, it raises ghosts of renewed "American exceptionalism" in the most messianic sense of that term. As Louis Hartz recognized nearly half a century ago, "Embodying an absolute moral ethos, 'Americanism,' once it is driven on to the world stage by events, is inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien things it tries to avoid.... An absolute national morality is inspired either to withdraw from 'alien' things or to transform them: it cannot live in comfort constantly by their side."68
Preventive war logic will culminate in a nuclear conflict with North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, or Iran
Duncan E. J. Currie LL.B. (Hons.) 5/22/2003 “’Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq” LL.M.
It may be that the United States and United Kingdom governments were frustrated by an inability to obtain the necessary Security Council resolutions. The call by the Australian government for a change in international law to address terrorism may also be seen to be a product of frustration. However if change is to be effected, it must be carried out in way that promotes international peace and security through multilateral action and the rule of law. This may be time consuming and frustrating, but the alternative danger is a weakening or even abandonment of the rule of law and undermining the prohibition on the use of force which has been the product of not only the international consensus to avoid war following two world wars but decades of consensus. The danger of setting a precedent for the use of force by other states is self evident. As one scholar recently observed in a different context, “[i]f the principle of reciprocity ensures that any state claiming a right under general customary international law accords that same right to every other state, states will only claim rights which they are prepared to see generalized. This is because a generalized right subjects the state to corresponding obligations vis-àvis all other states.” 19 In this context, Mr Howard’s citation of the attack on Pearl Harbour was of interest since a claimed motivation for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour was to prevent a feared military buildup by the United States. 20 In the following decade, in 1950, following a debate on a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union, the United States President Truman said that, “you don't 'prevent' anything by war...except peace." Already following the attack on Iraq, Indian officials have suggested there is a strong case for military action against Pakistan 21 and United States officials and leaders have used threatening rhetoric against Syria 22 and Iran. 23 If a ‘preventive war’ by the United States against North Korea is perceived to be avoided due to the possession by North Korea of nuclear weapons, 24 then that would be a powerful incentive for non-nuclear states to seek to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves against attack and would thus be a stimulus for nuclear proliferation rather than the rule of law.
(obama has a different grand strategy)
Solvency
Future courts will adhere to both the precedent set by the plan and its method of reasoning
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court. “The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules,” University of Chicago Law Review FALL, 1989 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175
But in the context of this discussion, that particular value of having a general rule of law is beside the point. For I want to explore the dichotomy between general rules and personal discretion within the narrow context of law that is made by the courts. In a [1177] judicial system such as ours, in which judges are bound, not only by the text of code or Constitution, but also by the prior decisions of superior courts, and even by the prior decisions of their own court, courts have the capacity to "make" law. Let us not quibble about the theoretical scope of a "holding"; the modern reality, at least, is that when the Supreme Court of the federal system, or of one of the state systems, decides a case, not merely the outcome of that decision, but the mode of analysis that it applies will thereafter be followed by the lower courts within that system, and even by that supreme court itself.And by making the mode of analysis relatively principled or relatively fact-specific, the courts can either establish general rules or leave ample discretion for the future.
CIL is the best framework for solving global threats
LEILA NADYA SADAT 2005,( Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis. ) AN AMERICAN VISION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE- WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY GLOBAL STUDIES LAW REVIEW [VOL. 4:329] AN AMERICAN VISION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE: “TAKING THE RULE OF (INTERNATIONAL) LAW SERIOUSLY” U.S. lawyers, with their commitment to and understanding of federalism, have extraordinary gifts to share in the crafting of a world order that permits the solution of global problems without unnecessary or undue interference in local affairs. A world order that will respect principles of democracy and separation of powers and that will operate “in the sunshine” and be accessible to the people. That can bring about the enhancement of human dignity, address global environmental problems, take on the continuing and potentially devastating threat from nuclear weapons, and alleviate world poverty and disease. For globalization is not just Americans’ profit—globalization is, above all, about people. If we embrace the peoples of the world as brothers and sisters, as members of the human family, globalization may bring peace and understanding. If we reduce them to elements of production, understanding is unlikely to follow. Legal rules create a framework for solving problems and avoiding misunderstandings. Legal institutions, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said of the United Nations itself, provide a “bridge upon which we can meet and talk.” 51 Even where we feel no empathy for individuals located in far corners of the globe, we must develop methods of interaction that will prove productive and stabilizing in the long term.
Inherency
Withdrawal by 2011 is inevitable, aff is the only chance to withdraw on the terms on CIL
AFP 6/2 ’10, “Odierno gives Obama ‘positive’ report on Iraq security” http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5giXOrrHvhjt0TgUugMKcJGrMOPoQ
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — US commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno Wednesday gave President Barack Obama a "positive" report on security as American combat troops prepare to exit within three months. "General Odierno provided a positive assessment of the current security conditions and the ongoing transition of responsibilities to Iraqi security forces," White House deputy spokesman Bill Burton told reporters. "The President and General Odierno also discussed the encouraging step taken by Iraq's federal Supreme Court to certify election results, as well as US support for an inclusive government formation process." Burton was speaking as Obama headed to Pittsburgh on Air Force One, after meeting Odierno in the Oval Office. The meeting came a day after US military support for Iraqi efforts to secure Baghdad's Green Zone ended, in the latest step in the American withdrawal from Iraq more than seven years after its invasion of Iraq. American combat troops are due to pull out of Iraq by the end of August, leaving behind around 50,000 soldiers who will focus on advising and training their Iraqi counterparts. Under the terms of a US-Iraq bilateral security agreement signed in November 2008, all American soldiers are to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Plan
Plan: The Supreme Court of The United States should rule the invasion of Iraq a violation of customary international law and therefore illegal and advise a withdraw with all deliberate speed.
Contention 1: International Law
The invasion of Iraq was blatantly in violation of international law, states need to restrict the violation
Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, William B. Saxbe Designated Professor of Law, Mortiz College of Law & Mershon Center, at the Ohio State University, 4/17/ 2003, JURIST Guest Columnist, “THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ: WHAT INTERNATIONAL LAW REQUIRES NOW”, Jurist Legal Intelligence
International lawyers around the world advised their governments on March 19 that the US-led invasion of Iraq was in violation of fundamental international law.[1] Following similar law violations by the US in the past, governments typically registered their condemnation by votes in the UN General Assembly. But Iraq is different and governments will face more, and more complicated, decisions in its aftermath. Two features distinguish this invasion: Iraq has considerably more assets outside US control than has been the case in the past, and the US policy behind the invasion, the doctrine of preemptive force, challenges the international legal system in a way the US has never before attempted. These features will create greater demands on states and organizations to consider their legal obligations in reacting to the invasion. Current obligations include the following: First, if states wish to preserve the current restrictions on the use of force, they will not condone the invasion, even while they condemn Saddam Hussein’s criminal acts and failure to comply with UN Security Council mandates. Second, the United Nations can legitimately administer Iraq, not the representatives of an unlawful occupying power. For the UN to administer, the Security Council must authorize it to do so in a new resolution. Ideally, the Council would also authorize a major peacekeeping and police force from states that did not take part in the war. The precedents for these steps are found in the examples of Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
Violation of international law with the preventive attack on Iraq threatens all CIL
Duncan E. J. Currie LL.B. (Hons.) 5/22/2003 “’Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq” LL.M.
A number of international lawyers have written opinions stating that it would be a violation of international law if the United States, United Kingdom and other States were to use military force against Iraq without specific, new Security Council authorization. These arguments will not be repeated here and reference should be made to those opinions. Notable are the opinions by Rabinder Singh and Charlotte Kilroy of Matrix Chambers. 25 The International Commission of Jurists denounced the attack as an illegal invasion of Iraq which amounts to a war of aggression. 26 Sixteen senior teachers of international law from the United Kingdom and France 27 wrote a statement stating that “[o]n the basis of the information publicly available, there is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq…. Before military action can lawfully be undertaken against Iraq, the security council must have indicated its clearly expressed assent. It has not yet done so. A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law.” 31 Canadian law professors said that US attack “would be a fundamental breach of international law and would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War,” 28 and 43 Australian legal experts said that the initiation of a war against Iraq by the self-styled ‘coalition of the willing’ would be a fundamental violation of international law and said that the United States doctrine or preemptive self defence contradicts the cardinal principle of the modern international legal order and the primary rationale for the founding of the UN after World War II - the prohibition of the unilateral use of force to settle disputes. 29 On March 11, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that "[i]f the U.S. and others were to go outside the Council and take military action it would not be in conformity with the Charter." 30 Briefly stated, it is clear from Article 2(4), Article 42 and Article 51 of the UN Charter that Member States are to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. Force may only be used if specifically approved by the Security Council or proportionate force may be used in self defence when a threat is imminent. In the latter case, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, “preventive action in foreign territory is justified only in case of ‘an instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’.” 31
The invasion of Iraq was an opportunity to rethink international law and the doctrine of preemption
David M. Ackerman (Legislative Attorney American Law Division) 3/17/2003 , CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Order Code RS21314, “International Law and the Preemptive Use of Force Against Iraq”
If customary international law governing the preemptive use of force does remain valid, a primary difficulty still remains of determining what situations meet the test of necessity. As illustrated in the examples listed above, that requirement is most easily met when an armed attack is clearly imminent, as in the case of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. But beyond such obvious situations, as Abram Chayes argued, the judgment of necessity becomes increasingly subjective; and there is at present no consensus either in theory or practice about whether the possession or development of weapons of mass destruction by a rogue state justifies the preemptive use of force. Most analysts recognize that if overwhelmingly lethal weaponry is possessed by a nation willing to use that weaponry directly or through surrogates, some kind of anticipatory self-defense may be a matter of national survival; and many contend that international law ought, if it does not already do so, to allow for the preemptive use of force in that situation. 18 But many states and analysts are decidedly reluctant to legitimate the preemptive use of force even in that situation on the grounds the justification can easily be abused. Moreover, it remains a fact that the international community judged Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor site in 1981 to be an aggressive act rather than an act of self-defense. An attack on Iraq, if done apart from authorization by the Security Council, likely will give the international community a renewed opportunity to determine whether traditional international law regarding preemption still applies or whether it ought to be reformulated.bn
Judicial incorporation of CIL strengthens international law globally
Douglas Sylvester 1994 , J.D., University at Buffalo School of Law, 1994; B.A., University of Toronto (St. Michael's College), 1991. Spring, 42 Buffalo Law Review 555, pg. lexis
The preceding sections have shown that historical and theoretical objections to a modern application of customary international law are not dispositive. Since the judiciary is not precluded from applying customary international law by the Constitution, history, or political theory, the only remaining question to be answered is whether the judiciary should begin applying it. The answer is clearly yes, for a number of reasons. First, there is the fact that much of international law since the Second World War has been created and fostered under the auspices, and to the benefit, of the United States. Judicial applications of international law have the possibility of continuing to solidify and evolve that process. Second, the decisions of domestic tribunals, as evidence of state practice, can have a significant impact on the further development of international law. n301 Increased participation of the domestic judiciary in international law cases will aid in the development of international law in accordance with the interests of the United States. [*620] Third, United States attempts to foster the rule of law in other nations have been seriously hampered by this country's refusal to be bound by the very proscriptions it espouses. This country's return to international legitimacy, even if through judicial imposition, would go far to strengthening the rule of law in international relations -- a development that can only support American interests. Finally, the disproportionate effect that this country's actions have upon the development of international law is another factor compelling the judiciary to enforce legitimacy. The incorporation of this law into United States constitutional discourse could have important ramifications. Such an incorporation could simultaneously strengthen the body of customary international law and make it easier for other nations to identify and enforce this law. Once these laws are made explicit it will become more difficult for violations to occur.
The plan’s precedent is modeled globally.
Angela G. Narasimhan, Ph D Candidate in Poli Sci @ Syracuse, 2010 (“A more global court? A call for a new perspective on judicial globalization and its effect on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Special Issue Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation. Pg. 123-151. Emerald Group Publishing)
Indeed, the greater political environment in which the Court operates has changed in recent decades. Since the end of the Cold War, the American legal system has gained visibility abroad through the U.S. involvement in constitution drafting and judicial reform. Although this involvement was originally a minor part of American foreign aid and concentrated primarily on the new democracies of Europe and the former Soviet Union, it became a primary focus of U.S. democracy assistance across the globe by the late 1990s as attention turned to the importance of securing the rule of law in transitional countries (Carothers, 2005). As a result, the prominence of our national judicial system quickly grew and members of foreign and international courts became more familiar with and likely to consider its decisions (Slaughter, 1998). Through these efforts, the U.S. system had a profound impact on the constitutional structure of emerging democracies and new legal networks as the active exportation and influence of the Bill of Rights abroad helped universalize human rights norms and led to international convergence on the importance of their protection (Kelemen & Sibbitt, 2004). On a global scale, a rise in both formal and informal interaction between the national judiciaries of the world has also been noted as a result of the legal connections that were forged in the post–Cold War era (Ackerman, 1997). The development of an active international community of judges and legal professionals has been part of what some scholars call judicial globalization, a process in which national courts have become increasingly likely to communicate and consult each others’ decisions (Slaughter, 1997). Although the consideration of foreign legal decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court is a disputed practice, the travel schedules and international commitments of its members reveal that they do participate in this global judicial community. While the U.S. government's active role in post–Cold War judicial reform has resulted in greater visibility of the Supreme Court and its decisions abroad (Scheppele, 2003), however, the question of whether its foreign connections and new level of global prominence have had any feedback effect on the Court itself remains largely unanswered. Within an increasingly global network of legal norms and actors, the U.S. role is generally considered to be limited to that of an exporter, not an importer; when certain justices have appeared to import foreign law by citing it in Court opinions, they have been politically vilified and criticized by other justices and legal scholars. Existing literature on the Supreme Court largely mirrors this emphasis, restricting its analysis of external influences on the Court to foreign law and the decisions by certain justices to cite it. As a result, the possibility that changes brought about by judicial globalization may have influenced the Court in other ways has been overlooked. This chapter calls for a more dynamic perspective that measures these changes and investigates the full range of their potential effects on Court decisions, as well as on the way that the justices consider their role within increasingly globalized legal networks. First, it reviews the debate on foreign citations and proposes that we begin by considering alternative theories of judicial decision-making when discussing their place in American constitutional law. We need to look beyond justices’ ideology and conflicting views on constitutional interpretation to explain their willingness to cite foreign law or not to fully capture the new set of pressures and choices that judicial globalization may have created for Supreme Court justices. Second, this chapter identifies several models of Supreme Court behavior that do so, in that they consider the role of external sources of influence on its decisions, including domestic and international actors, norms, and institutions. These models can help us understand the ways in which judicial globalization has the potential to expose the Court to global trends, norms, or political priorities through interaction at both an individual level and an institutional level. Third, it argues that we would also benefit by searching for evidence of judicial globalization in places other than the justices’ opinions. The recent era of globalization, characterized by changes such as a rise in the citation of Supreme Court decisions by foreign courts and international interest in its cases, has transformed the broader social and political environment in which it operates and created new salient audiences that may change the way that the justices approach and define their job. Finally, this chapter concludes by noting that the domestic debate over foreign influences on the Supreme Court has attracted attention and concern throughout the world, highlighting the globalized nature of legal networks and the degree to which its members are invested in how much respect is given to the laws of international organizations and other nations in our constitutional system. The backlash against American judicial isolationism abroad has changed the stakes of any future efforts by the Court's members to define their relationship with foreign counterparts, as it becomes apparent that those efforts have the potential to affect its position within the global legal order and threaten its legitimacy abroad.
Only court action sets a precedent for future use of customary international law.
Kundmueller, 02 (JD Candidate – Notre Dame, 28 J. Legis. 359)
This section of this Note, on the legal authority of customary international law vis-a-vis federal legislation, has not been included with the purpose of discovering which position is correct. Rather, the overview of this debate holds a central place in this Note because it demonstrates some of the issues at stake as U.S. courts begin to integrate customary international law into what were previously thought of as purely or primarily domestic issues. Admittedly, the number of cases using customary international law in this manner is still few and primarily based on some enabling federal statute. Nonetheless, these decisions take on a greater importance in light of the de- bate discussed above. Should theorists such as Paust and Lillich prevail, these early cases, taking the first modern steps in the process of identifying and applying customary international law would become crucial precedent in a law-making process that Congress would be powerless to overturn. On the other hand, the case law about to be analyzed will lie at the mercy of the will of the people and their Congress, should the theories of Kelley and Garland prove prophetic. It is still too early to know which faction will dominate, but this analysis of their theories does survey the potential spectrum of out- comes and the legal and political issues yet to be determined.
The convergent nature of domestic and international law makes the court essential
Knowles, 9’ (Robert, Acting Assistant Professor, New York University School of Law, 41 Ariz. St. L.J. 87 American Hegemony and the Foreign Affairs Constitution)
International relations scholars are still struggling to define the current era. The U.S.-led international order is unipolar, hegemonic, and, in some ways, imperial. In any event, this order diverges from traditional realist assumptions in important respects. It is unipolar, but stable. It is more hierarchical. The U.S. is not the same as other states; it performs unique functions in the world and has a government open and accessible to foreigners. And the stability and legitimacy of the system depends more on successful functioning of the U.S. government as a whole than it does on balancing alliances crafted by elite statesmen practicing realpolitik. “[W]orld power politics are shaped primarily not by the structure created by interstate anarchy but by the foreign policy developed in Washington.”368 These differences require a new model for assessing the institutional competences of the executive and judicial branches in foreign affairs. One approach would be to adapt an institutional competence model using insights from a major alternative theory of international relations – liberalism. Liberal IR theory generally holds that internal characteristics of states – in particular, the form of government – dictate states behavior, and that democracies do not go to war against one another.369 Liberalists also regard economic interdependence and international institutions as important for maintaining peace and stability in the world.370 Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter has proposed a binary model that distinguishes between liberal, democratic states and non-democratic states.371 Because domestic and foreign issues are “more convergent” among liberal democracies, Slaughter reasons, the courts should decide issues concerning the scope of the political branches’ powers.372 With respect to non-liberal states, the position of the U.S. is more “realist,” and courts should deploy a high level of deference.373 A strength of Dean Slaughter’s binary approach is that it would tend to reduce the uncertainty in foreign affairs adjudication. Professor Nzelibe has criticized this approach because it would put courts in the difficult position of determining which countries are liberal democracies.374 But even if courts are capable of making these determinations, they would still face the same dilemmas adjudicating controversies regarding non-liberal states. Where is the appropriate boundary between foreign affairs and domestic matters? How much discretion should be afforded the executive when individual rights and accountability values are at stake? To resolve these dilemmas, an institutional competence model should be applicable to foreign affairs adjudication across the board. In constructing a new realist model, it is worth recalling that the functional justifications for special deference are aimed at addressing problems of a particular sort of role effectiveness—which allocation of power among the branches will best achieve general governmental effectiveness in foreign affairs. In the 21st Century, America’s global role has changed, and the best means of achieving effectiveness in foreign affairs have changed as well. The international realm remains highly political—if not as much as in the past— but it is American politics that matters most. If the U.S. is truly an empire— and in some respects it is—the problems of imperial management will be far different from the problems of managing relations with one other great power or many great powers. Similarly, the management of hegemony or unipolarity requires a different set of competences. Although American predominance is recognized as a salient fact, there is no consensus among realists about the precise nature of the current international order.375 The hegemonic model I offer here adopts common insights from the three IR frameworks—unipolar, hegemonic, and imperial—described above.
International Law is inevitable but US engagement is critical to its effectiveness
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, 2 (Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, May, http://www.ieer.org/reports/treaties/execsumm.pdf)
The evolution of international law since World War II is largely a response to the demands of states and individuals living within a global society with a deeply integrated world economy. In this global society, the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors, and individuals are not confined within borders, whether we look to greenhouse gas accumulations, nuclear testing, the danger of accidental nuclear war, or the vast massacres of civilians that have taken place over the course of the last hundred years and still continue. Multilateral agreements increasingly have been a primary instrument employed by states to meet extremely serious challenges of this kind, for several reasons. They clearly and publicly embody a set of universally applicable expectations, including prohibited and required practices and policies. In other words, they articulate global norms, such as the protection of human rights and the prohibitions of genocide and use of weapons of mass destruction. They establish predictability and accountability in addressing a given issue. States are able to accumulate expertise and confidence by participating in the structured system offered by a treaty. However, influential U.S. policymakers are resistant to the idea of a treaty-based international legal system because they fear infringement on U.S. sovereignty and they claim to lack confidence in compliance and enforcement mechanisms. This approach has dangerous practical implications for international cooperation and compliance with norms. U.S. treaty partners do not enter into treaties expecting that they are only political commitments by the United States that can be overridden based on U.S. interests. When a powerful and influential state like the United States is seen to treat its legal obligations as a matter of convenience or of national interest alone, other states will see this as a justification to relax or withdraw from their own commitments. If the United States wants to require another state to live up to its treaty obligations, it may find that the state has followed the U.S. example and opted out of compliance.
An international legal system is inevitable – not incorporating international law only risks legal anarchy.
Martinez, 03 (Assistant Professor, Stanford Law School, November, 56 Stan. L. Rev. 429)
The fact is that judicial bodies around the world are interacting with each other every day. These interactions take many forms - a Canadian court reviews a NAFTA arbitration panel award obtained by a U.S. investor against the government of Mexico;n60 a court in Florida hearing a civil suit against a former Latin American military officer now living in the United States must consider whether to follow decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on the scope of military commanders' liability for torture committed by their subordinates; n61 a court in Texas hearing a bankruptcy case must decide how to react to parallel suits pending in England and the Cayman Islands. n62 Courts cannot avoid these interactions. A court may decide to ignore the existence of a foreign or international court, but that in itself is a choice, and one which shapes the contours of the emerging international system. Over time, a habitual practice of parochially disregarding the existence of other courts will lead to chaos and dysfunction. It is not too far-fetched to say that property interests will be compromised and business relations impaired, human rights will be violated and legal obligations will be thrown into doubt. We will have an international judicial system, but it will be a severely dysfunctional one. Such an anarchic outcome seems undesirable, but how can it be avoided? Is this system doomed to settle into chaotic behavior, or can self-organization by courts make it work?
IF the US does not respect international law it will weaken our ability to protect our interest abroad
Antonia Chayes, BA, Radcliffe College, Visiting Professor of International Politics and Law in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University., Summer 2008, Volume 33, Number 1, E-ISSN: 1531-4804 Print ISSN: 0162-2889 “How American Treaty Behavior Threatens National Security”
Such conflicting positions, as one commentator has observed, signal to the international community that U.S. treaty obligations and policy can be unpredictable, unenforceable, and unreliable. The conflicting positions indicate that the United States "withdraw[s] from treaties it deems critical of United States positions and show[s] disdain for long-standing international obligations which the United States itself helped create."90 The result is that, if the Bush administration "does not protect the interests of foreign governments and their nationals, it may find its own ability to protect United States nationals abroad has been damaged."91 [End Page 68
International law is key to avert multiple scenarios for extinction
Malaysian Medical Association 02 [“11TH SEPTEMBER - DAY OF REMEMBRANCE,” Sep 6, http://www.mma.org.my/current_topic/sept.htm]
Our world is increasingly interdependent and the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors and individuals transcend national boundaries. Weapons of mass destruction, landmines, small arms and environmental damage have global consequences, whether they be deadly armed conflict, nuclear testing or climate change from global warming. The risk of nuclear war continues to threaten human survival. The casualties resulting from even a single explosion would overwhelm the medical facilities in any city in the world. The use of nuclear weapons is morally indefensible, and the International Court of Justice has declared their use and threatened use illegal. Yet, nuclear weapons remain part of the military strategy of many nations. Nuclear war must be prevented. Nuclear weapons must be eliminated. Ongoing violations of the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian and human rights law and increasing poverty and preventable disease continue to fuel violence. World military expenditure, estimated at US$839 billion in 2001, prevents governments from meeting the social needs of their citizens and the global proliferation of armaments has caused unspeakable carnage. We call on all governments to place their foreign and domestic policies and their behaviour under the scrutiny of international law and international institutions. Each government must take primary responsibility for ending its own contribution to the cycle of violence. As citizens, we are expected to abide by the law. We expect no less from governments. This is a necessary part of honouring the lives of so many men, women and children whose deaths are commemorate. At a time when global problems should be solved by cooperating and complying with multilateral legally-binding treaties, and by embracing the rule of law as valuable instruments for building common security and safe-guarding the long-term, collective interests of humanity, there are unmistable signs that powerful states are taking unilateral action, setting aside international treaties, and undermining international law. The principle of the rule of law implies that even the most powerful must comply with the law, even if it is difficult or costly or when superior economic, military and diplomatic power may seem to make compliance unnecessary. The destruction of the symbols of American economic power and military might on 11th September is a salutary reminder that military power, including the possession of nuclear weapons, does not deter terrorists or confer security or invulnerability. It has prompted the Bush administration to declare "war on terror" and convinced it that a military response is the best way to fight terrorism on a global scale, without considering alternative, more effective ways of combating terrorism, such as addressing the root causes of terrorism. The greatest betrayal of those who died on 11th September 2001 would be to not recognise that there are non-violent ways of resolving conflict. This is a difficult, uncertain path to take, whereas violence and war are easy, predictable options. The lesson of 11th September is that our collective survival depends upon forging cooperative, just and equitable relationships with each other; in rejecting violence and war; and in pursuing non-violent resolutions to conflict. The alternative is a world perpetually divided, continually at war, and possibly destroying itself through environmental degradation or the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The only alternative to international law is genocide and nuclear war.
Shaw, 1’ (Sussex International Relations Professor , Review of International Studies, 27, pp. 646-7)
The new politics of international relations require us, therefore, to go beyond the anti-imperialism of the intellectual left as well as of the semi-anarchist traditions of the academic discipline. We need to recognize three fundamental truths. First, in the twenty-first century people struggling for democratic liberties across the non Western world are likely to make constant demands on our solidarity. Courageous academics, students and other intellectuals will be in the forefront of these movements. They deserve the unstinting support of intellectuals in the West. Second, the old international thinking in which democratic movements are seen as purely internal to states no longer carries conviction?despite the lingering nostalgia for it on both the American right and the anti-American left. The idea that global principles can and should be enforced worldwide is firmly established in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. This consciousness will become a powerful force in the coming decades. Third, global state-formation is a fact. International institutions are being extended, and (like it or not) they have a symbiotic relation with the major centre of state power, the increasingly internationalized Western conglomerate. The success of the global-democratic revolutionary wave depends first on how well it is consolidated in each national context?but second, on how thoroughly it is embedded in international networks of power, at the centre of which, inescapably, is the West. From these political fundamentals, strategic propositions can be derived. First, democratic movements cannot regard non-governmental organizations and civil society as ends in themselves. They must aim to civilize local states, rendering them open, accountable and pluralistic, and curtail the arbitrary and violent exercise of power. Second, democratizing local states is not a separate task from integrating them into global and often Western-centred networks. Reproducing isolated local centres of power carries with it classic dangers of states as centres of war.84 Embedding global norms and integrating new state centres with global institutional frameworks are essential to the control of violence. (To put this another way: the proliferation of purely national democracies is not a recipe for peace.) Third, while the global revolution cannot do without the West and the UN, neither can it rely on them unconditionally. We need these power networks, but we need to tame them too, to make their messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society worldwide. This will involve the kind of 'cosmopolitan democracy' argued for by David Held.85 It will also require us to advance a global sodaZ-democratic agenda, to address the literally catastrophic scale of world social inequalities. This is not a separate problem: social and economic reform is an essential ingredient of alternatives to warlike and genocidal power; these feed off and reinforce corrupt and criminal political economies. Fourth, if we need the global-Western state, if we want to democratize it and make its institutions friendlier to global peace and justice, we cannot be indifferent to its strategic debates. It matters to develop international political interventions, legal institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives to bombing our way through zones of crisis. It matters that international intervention supports pluralist structures, rather than ratifying Bosnia-style apartheid}6 As political intellectuals in the West, we need to have our eyes on the ball at our feet, but we also need to raise them to the horizon. We need to grasp the historic drama that is transforming worldwide relationships between people and state, as well as between state and state. We need to think about how the turbulence of the global revolution can be consolidated in democratic, pluralist, international networks of both social relations and state authority. We cannot be simply optimistic about this prospect. Sadly, it will require repeated violent political crises to push Western and other governments towards the required restructuring of world institutions.87 What I have outlined is a huge challenge; but the alternative is to see the global revolu tion splutter into partial defeat, or degenerate into new genocidal wars? perhaps even nuclear conflicts. The practical challenge for all concerned citizens, and the theoretical and analytical challenges for students of international relations and politics, are intertwined.
Contention 2: Preventive War
Preventive logic allows for military strikes and war- empirically proven
Jack S. Levy, Preventive War and Democratic Politics, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, 3/1/2007, Chicago, Rutgers University, International Studies Quarterly (2008) 52, 1–24
Preventive logic can lead to a limited military strike as well as to an all-out war. 23 Whether a limited strike remains limited or escalates to war depends not only on the actions of the preventer, but also on those of the target. Presumably the initiator anticipates the target’s likely response and incorporates it into its initial decision calculus. It might launch a limited military strike if it expects no military response and refrain from military action if it expects a major military response. Israel’s anticipation that Iraq would not respond to a limited Israeli strike contributed to its decision to launch a surgical strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 (Nakdimon 1987; Perlmutter et al. 2003). In contrast, the U.S. anticipation that North Korea would probably respond to a limited strike against its nuclear facilities in 1994 with an all-out attack on South Korea was a major factor in the U.S. decision against military action (Sigal 1997; Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci 2004). Similarly, India was deterred from launching a surgical strike against Pakistan’s nuclear facilities by its belief that Pakistan would respond in kind and that the radioactive fallout from an attack on India’s nuclear reactors would be enormously costly (Ganguly and Hagerty 2005, 55–57; Perkovich 1999).
Preventive motive for war triggers power transition and military responses
Jack S. Levy, Preventive War and Democratic Politics, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, 3/1/2007, Chicago, Rutgers University, International Studies Quarterly (2008) 52, 1–24
The preventive motivation for war, usually associated with power transitions involving the overtaking of a declining leader by a rising challenger, can also arise in response to more limited power shifts. One example is a ‘‘rapid approach’’ that levels off short of a power transition (Wayman 1996). Another is the challenger’s crossing a particular threshold of military power, leading to a step-level power shift. While such limited power shifts are presumably less threatening than those leading to a reversal of power relations, they can still trigger military responses, even in a non-nuclear context. The Czech ⁄ Russian arms sale to Egypt was a major factor leading to Israel’s preventive motivation for war in the 1956 Sinai Campaign (Levy and Gochal 2001–2002). The anticipated completion of Russia’s trans-Siberian railroad and its expected enhancement of Russia’s power projection capabilities in East Asia contributed to Japan’s decision for war in 1904 (Patrikeeff and Shukman 2007).
The doctrine of double standards i.e. the preventive logic diminishes the US’s ability to promote values and interests
Harold Hongju Koh Stanford Law Review, Vol. 55, No. 5 (May, 2003), pp. 1479-1527, “On American Exceptionalism”
If the emerging Bush Doctrine takes hold, the United States may well emerge from the post-9/11 era still powerful, but deeply committed to double standards as a means of preserving U.S. hegemony. Promoting standards that apply to others but not to us represents the very antithesis of America's claim, since the end of World War II, to apply universal legal and human rights standards. The real danger of the Bush Doctrine is thus that it will turn the United States, which since 1945 has been the major architect and buttress of the global system of international law and human rights, into its major outlier, weakening that system and reducing its capacity to promote universal values and protect American interests. More fundamentally, it raises ghosts of renewed "American exceptionalism" in the most messianic sense of that term. As Louis Hartz recognized nearly half a century ago, "Embodying an absolute moral ethos, 'Americanism,' once it is driven on to the world stage by events, is inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien things it tries to avoid.... An absolute national morality is inspired either to withdraw from 'alien' things or to transform them: it cannot live in comfort constantly by their side."68
Preventive war logic will culminate in a nuclear conflict with North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, or Iran
Duncan E. J. Currie LL.B. (Hons.) 5/22/2003 “’Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq” LL.M.
It may be that the United States and United Kingdom governments were frustrated by an inability to obtain the necessary Security Council resolutions. The call by the Australian government for a change in international law to address terrorism may also be seen to be a product of frustration. However if change is to be effected, it must be carried out in way that promotes international peace and security through multilateral action and the rule of law. This may be time consuming and frustrating, but the alternative danger is a weakening or even abandonment of the rule of law and undermining the prohibition on the use of force which has been the product of not only the international consensus to avoid war following two world wars but decades of consensus. The danger of setting a precedent for the use of force by other states is self evident. As one scholar recently observed in a different context, “[i]f the principle of reciprocity ensures that any state claiming a right under general customary international law accords that same right to every other state, states will only claim rights which they are prepared to see generalized. This is because a generalized right subjects the state to corresponding obligations vis-àvis all other states.” 19 In this context, Mr Howard’s citation of the attack on Pearl Harbour was of interest since a claimed motivation for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour was to prevent a feared military buildup by the United States. 20 In the following decade, in 1950, following a debate on a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union, the United States President Truman said that, “you don't 'prevent' anything by war...except peace." Already following the attack on Iraq, Indian officials have suggested there is a strong case for military action against Pakistan 21 and United States officials and leaders have used threatening rhetoric against Syria 22 and Iran. 23 If a ‘preventive war’ by the United States against North Korea is perceived to be avoided due to the possession by North Korea of nuclear weapons, 24 then that would be a powerful incentive for non-nuclear states to seek to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves against attack and would thus be a stimulus for nuclear proliferation rather than the rule of law.
(obama has a different grand strategy)
Solvency
Future courts will adhere to both the precedent set by the plan and its method of reasoning
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court. “The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules,” University of Chicago Law Review FALL, 1989 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175
But in the context of this discussion, that particular value of having a general rule of law is beside the point. For I want to explore the dichotomy between general rules and personal discretion within the narrow context of law that is made by the courts. In a [1177] judicial system such as ours, in which judges are bound, not only by the text of code or Constitution, but also by the prior decisions of superior courts, and even by the prior decisions of their own court, courts have the capacity to "make" law. Let us not quibble about the theoretical scope of a "holding"; the modern reality, at least, is that when the Supreme Court of the federal system, or of one of the state systems, decides a case, not merely the outcome of that decision, but the mode of analysis that it applies will thereafter be followed by the lower courts within that system, and even by that supreme court itself. And by making the mode of analysis relatively principled or relatively fact-specific, the courts can either establish general rules or leave ample discretion for the future.
CIL is the best framework for solving global threats
LEILA NADYA SADAT 2005,( Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis. ) AN AMERICAN VISION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE- WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY GLOBAL STUDIES LAW REVIEW [VOL. 4:329] AN AMERICAN VISION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE: “TAKING THE RULE OF (INTERNATIONAL) LAW SERIOUSLY”
U.S. lawyers, with their commitment to and understanding of federalism, have extraordinary gifts to share in the crafting of a world order that permits the solution of global problems without unnecessary or undue interference in local affairs. A world order that will respect principles of democracy and separation of powers and that will operate “in the sunshine” and be accessible to the people. That can bring about the enhancement of human dignity, address global environmental problems, take on the continuing and potentially devastating threat from nuclear weapons, and alleviate world poverty and disease. For globalization is not just Americans’ profit—globalization is, above all, about people. If we embrace the peoples of the world as brothers and sisters, as members of the human family, globalization may bring peace and understanding. If we reduce them to elements of production, understanding is unlikely to follow. Legal rules create a framework for solving problems and avoiding misunderstandings. Legal institutions, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said of the United Nations itself, provide a “bridge upon which we can meet and talk.” 51 Even where we feel no empathy for individuals located in far corners of the globe, we must develop methods of interaction that will prove productive and stabilizing in the long term.